Troubled Production / Music Albums Artists A To E

A

• The Adventures of Duane & BrandO — the video game-themed Nerdcore duo consisting of Duane Zuwala and Brandon "BrandO" Lackey — experienced a multitude of behind-the-scenes problems following the release of their early work, including their debut LP of Devastation in 2009. Following a brief disbandment in 2010 (mostly the result of an extramarital affair), the two made up and officially reunited in 2012, launching a Kickstarter campaign to cover a new tour and future content, covering not just the music and merch, but also personal living expenses (both were living in a rather poor section of Flint, Michigan). While the campaign was successful, they hit a major snag in 2013 as it discovered a vast majority of the funds — whose responsibility fell directly on Duane; BrandO didn't even have a bank account at the time — were straight-up missing with little to no explanation (BrandO suspects it might've gone to Duane's personal family expenses, but chose not to pursue legal action out of concern for Duane's children, as well as it being around the time Duane's brother passed away). The two managed to continue releasing content between 2014-15 — a single based on Super Mario Bros. 3, an EP, and merch shipments to Kickstarter backers, with the promise of their second full-length album (titled Better Than Nothing) on the way — but as BrandO would reveal later, this is because it was being paid for entirely out of pocket as he believed he could potentially cover the lost money and no one would have to notice, but the financial and logistical strain became increasingly unbearable as the years went on. After a suspiciously long period of silence, BrandO spoke out in 2018 to reveal their financial situation, revealing that he and Duane had burnt out and were no longer on speaking terms, pretty much ensuring that the duo and their anticipated album were truly done for.
  • Surrounding the turmoil was their ill-fated album based on EarthBound. Originally planned as a 19-track album shortly following the LP of Devastation with a fully-announced tracklist, Duane and BrandO managed to complete 10 of them before they broke up in 2010. BrandO originally planned to finish the album by himself, including re-dubbing the already-recorded vocals of Ness, who was previously played by Duane. Things improved when the two reunited and they presumably got back to working on finishing the album together, but in part due to the aforementioned funding problem, they only finished two additional tracks before breaking up again. In 2014, they released EarthBound (2010) onto their Bandcamp containing their original ten completed tracks, but with no further assumption or promise that the rest would be finished.
• Aerosmith's Nine Lives, their return to Columbia Records after experiencing a Career Resurrection at Geffen Records, did not come out easily. One week before rehearsals, drummer Joey Kramer left because he went into a deep depression, having grieved the loss of his father shortly prior, and the band hired a session drummer in case Kramer didn't return. The first recordings with Glen Ballard (who co-wrote a few tracks) did not satisfy the band, leading to a delayed release as Aerosmith fired their long-time manager, reunited with Geffen's A&R man John Kalodner (who was at Columbia, but the manager decided to keep away) - who helped Tyler with the painful task of cutting over 10 tracks he had recorded - and discarded what had been done to re-record under producer Kevin Shirley. Then shortly after release, the album cover drew fury from Hindus and had to be changed with an alternative one until later reissues.
• Alice in Chains:
  • The band's second studio album, Dirt, was plagued by vocalist Layne Staley's huge drug addiction. Staley would arrive in the studio singing off key due to how stoned he was. At one point, his drug dealer even came into the studio, trying to tell longtime producer Dave Jerden how to mix the album. Staley ended up turning himself into rehab not long afterwards. On top of that, drummer Sean Kinney and bassist Mike Starr were struggling with alcohol addiction. There was also issues with the band arriving into the studio on time, as the day after they started recording the Los Angeles Riots had started, causing massive traffic jams. At one point, guitarist Jerry Cantrell actually watched a convenience store get held up by a robber. They ended up taking an emergency vacation into the Joshua Tree desert until the riots calmed down. Nonetheless, the album became a massive success, putting Alice in Chains in the same tier as Nirvana for popularity in grunge at the time.
  • Their self-titled album, which followed up Dirt, was no slouch either. By the time of its production, Staley had deteriorated rapidly due to his addiction, and had to keep it in check multiple times during the recordings. Relationships within the band were at an all-time low; days passed by while his bandmates and studio personnel were waiting for him to finally arrive, and hours passed by waiting for him to come out of the bathroom. When he did leave, it was anyone's guess as to whether they would be able to get some quality takes, or if the day would be a loss because he was too fucked up to do anything.
  • The recording sessions for the songs "Get Born Again" and "Died" were the last ones Staley had done with the band. At that point, he was effectively a walking corpse, but one who could at least sing to some extent. Once again, the band had difficulties getting him to work as he would either not work at all or make up excuses to leave so he could get high. This upset Cantrell to the point where he yelled at Staley for his excuses and refused to work in the same studio with him. The recordings also initially involved Jerden, who was later replaced with Toby Wright as tensions rose.
• The Allman Brothers' final album of the first phase of their career, Win, Lose or Draw, was, as many such bitter ends are, plagued by this trope.
  • Before the sessions began, Gregg Allman and Dickie Betts had already made plans to record solo albums for release afterwards. This led to mistrust from the other members, particularly after Allman missed the first day of sessions. When he did show up, the rest of the band spent little time recording or writing and instead confronted him at length about his future commitment to the band, confrontations Betts and others later admitted were aggravated by everyone's heavy drug use at the time. Over the rest of the sessions things deteriorated further, with Allman and Betts increasingly skipping sessions, unless it was their songs being recorded.
  • This annoyed the other members to the point that they, too, began skipping sessions. Eventually the sessions, as they often do in these situations, deteriorated to the point where a band who had recorded some of its best work by playing together live in the studio instead recorded their parts individually, with no one else present, and letting the producers put it together. At some points the producers even had to play parts on their own.
  • The final album was poorly received; it is considered their worst. It still managed to make the Top 10 and go gold, but that was far less well than the Allmans had been used to doing, and after its release, the band broke up for another 14 years.
• Alphaville ran into this issue for two of their albums.
  • The Breathtaking Blue was recorded in a brand new studio that the band financed and designed themselves, but unlike their previous two albums, they had no plan for a particular sound or themes to explore and made the album up as they went along. They also tried to record songs as soon as they wrote them without recording demos first. Since they owned the studio and were acting as their own producers, they had no deadlines to meet either. Additionally, since they had no demos to fall back on, each of the band's three members tried to steer the production process into his own artistic direction, leading to a lot of infighting. Things got better once Klaus Schulze was brought on as a co-producer, but the intended six week production process ended up taking a year and a half. On top of all of that, the band had to repeatedly rebuff their record label's pleas that they go on a concert tour. Lead singer Marian Gold later expressed surprise that The Breathtaking Blue didn't end the band for good.
  • Strange Attractor was originally announced to release on September 27, 2014. The final release date was April 7, 2017. Like The Breathtaking Blue there was no grand plan for the album and the band made things up as they went along. But unlike that album, the band WAS touring during recording of Strange Attractor, prolonging the production process. Sadly, keyboardist and songwriter Martin Lister unexpectedly died halfway through the making of the album, and bassist Maja Kim left the band toward the end.

B

• Bad Religion, while minor compared to other albums, have had some run-ins with this trope in the past.
  • Their first album, How Could Hell Be Any Worse?, was the band's third attempt to produce a studio-length album. Lacking money, they were forced to record their album in two days at Track Record Studios, getting only half the songs done. While working on lyrics for more songs, drummer Jay Ziskrout decided to quit the band for unknown reasons, causing them to have to use roadie Pete Finestone as a replacement.
  • The Process of Belief had drummer Bobby Schayer replaced due to a sudden shoulder injury, leaving him permanently unable to play drums. Recording sessions became audition sessions in search of a new drummer, going through five drummers before deciding on Brooks Wackerman.
• The Beach Boys have had more than their fair share of production trouble, most of it stemming from a single album.
  • SMiLE is one of the greatest rock albums never released, and there are many factors as to why it was never released.
    • During the time of recording, Brian Wilson began experimenting with more potent drugs like LSD and cocaine. This took a toll on his already degrading state of mind. One famous incident led to him experiencing ego death during an acid trip, and inspired the song "The Elements: Fire".
    • As time went on, Brian's mental health further declined and grew increasingly more eccentric and erratic. He shelved "Fire", believing that it was magically lighting fires throughout the town. When he walked into a theater showing the film Seconds (1966) (which was partially financed by Brian's main inspiration, Phil Spector), a character coincidentally said, "Come in, Mr. Wilson." This convinced Brian that Spector was following him and had made a movie about him. He cut off contact with one of his friends because he was convinced that his friend's girlfriend was using ESP to stop Wilson from making the album. He suspected that his father was spying on him from behind the scenes. As the recording sessions progressed, he even began hearing voices.
    • Frustrated with their lack of creative control, the Boys decided to attempt to end their contract with Capitol Records and form their own label, Brother Records. Unfortunately, this led to a brief lawsuit between the Boys and Capitol where the band demanded unpaid royalties and termination of their contract.
    • During the formation of Brother Records, Carl Wilson was drafted into the United States Army. He refused to report for duty, and was arrested for being a conscientious objector in May 1967.
    • Brian's insistent perfectionism would prove to be his own undoing, as he would repeatedly miss release dates so he could continue to tinker with already completed songs. The way he recorded the album was that he would record each section of a song separately, and splice them together to create the final product. This modular approach to recording led to him splicing sections together in many different ways, trying to find a final product he was satisfied with, which ultimately led to nothing getting done for a good part of 1967.
    • In 1967, after missing another release date, he decided that he needed to focus on preparing the two tracks "Heroes and Villains" and "Vega-Tables" for release as potential lead singles. It was during this time that he began to doubt his own abilities, and started to fear that the public would hate the album. What didn't help was pressure from the label and Mike Love to stick to a more conventional sound over concerns that this new sound would alienate their audience of teenyboppers. Brian's fears would turn out to be justified in his mind when "Heroes and Villains", the follow-up single to "Good Vibrations" and the centerpiece to SMiLE, flopped on the charts. He took that as a sign of rejection of his growing artistic abilities from the public.
    • During the sessions for the song "Cabin Essence", Mike and Brian's lyricist Van Dyke Parks got into an argument over the lyric "Over and over, the crow cries uncover the cornfield" and its supposed meaning, to which Van Dyke argued there is none. From that point on, Van Dyke began to distance himself from the project, and he left altogether in mid-1967, close to the album's cancellation.
    • Brian basically recorded SMiLE in a race against The Beatles to beat Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band to market. However, he heard rumors that the Boys' publicist, Derek Taylor (who previously worked for the Beatles), played the SMiLE tapes for the Beatles behind his back, and started doubting the people around him. When Sgt. Pepper was released first, he took it as a sign that the Beatles won, and it severely demotivated him to work on SMiLE.
    • The final straw was when Van Dyke left the project over concerns that he was causing friction between members of the band. This left Brian without a direction for the album, and was unsure how to finish it.
    • In the end, Brian broke down, and cancelled the album altogether. A stripped-down replacement called Smiley Smile was hastily recorded, and SMiLE would not see release for decades. However, material from the album would slowly trickle out as album filler. After decades of battling mental illness, Brian would pull himself together and re-record SMiLE in 2004 to critical acclaim and in the end, the original Beach Boys sessions would finally see release in 2011.
  • It is far from the only album that the band had issues with. In 1992, they got together to record what was to be another triumphant return for the band, Summer in Paradise. Unfortunately, Brian Wilson was struggling with leaving the care of another person at the time and couldn't make the recording sessions. This left notorious Jerkass Mike Love in charge of the recording. Love demanded synthesized drum and bass parts, prevented certain band members from being able to play on the album, insisted on allowing John Stamos to sing on a track despite band member wishes, and made things a general living hell for those involved. The album barely sold 10,000 copies, was critically lambasted, was left out of the 2000-2001 reissues, and is seldom acknowledged by the band, with not even Mike acknowledging it despite it supposedly being his pet project, as he only mentions it once in his entire biography.
• The recording sessions for The Beatles' last three studio albums were marked by constant acrimony and infighting, especially the first two:
  • The sessions for The Beatles (AKA The White Album) in late 1968 found the Beatles largely working alone with whatever engineers they had handy and spending hours jamming with no results. The tense atmosphere and lack of productivity caused their longtime engineer Geoff Emerick to quit halfway through, and even George Martin felt he had to take a vacation. It pretty much marked the point when the arguments and fights that would later break up the band first reared their ugly head. The atmosphere was so bad Ringo Starr even left the band for a couple of days, leading Paul McCartney to play drums on both "Back in the USSR" and "Dear Prudence".
  • The Beatles started work on Get Back (which came to be known as Let It Be) in early 1969, thinking that returning to the good ol' days of studio jams would get them out of their rut. It didn't work, of course, and the documentary film that was supposed to capture genius at work instead captured the ugly breakdown of a once great band.
    • The original plan was for a climactic TV performance in front of a live audience at Twickenham Studios, but the band were unimpressed by the room's acoustics, and although they were racing against the clock due to Ringo Starr's commitments to filming The Magic Christian, they struggled to come up with material; John Lennon was in a creative funk (not helped by drug problems or Yoko Ono's fragility following a miscarriage the previous month), Paul McCartney was uncomfortable with the perception that he was the sole decision maker, and George Harrison was growing frustrated at being sidelined as a songwriter. A week into rehearsals, George announced he was quitting the band, and he only agreed to return after several meetings with the other Beatles and the scrapping of the TV special idea.
    • Fed up with the poor acoustics at Twickenham and thinking a change of scene might help heal the internal strife, the band decided to decamp to Apple Studios, but an initial test of Alexis "Magic Alex" Mardas' "cutting edge" sound system produced a distorted mess, resulting in the hasty acquisition of a portable recording system from EMI.
    • Though the sessions went more smoothly thereafter, especially when keyboardist Billy Preston (whom the Beatles had known since the early 1960s) stopped by to say hello and was invited to play on the album as a guest musician, and the "live performance" idea evolved into the iconic Rooftop Concert (until it was shut down by the police following noise complaints by local business owners), producer Glyn Johns' attempts to put the results together as an album were consistently rejected by the band.
    • The album was eventually released in May 1970 when Phil "Wall of Sound" Spector cobbled together what usable bits existed of the recording sessions and turned them into complete songs; while John approved of the resulting mix of "Across the Universe",^note  As the Beatles had failed to produce a viable take of the song during the Get Back sessions, Spector simply re-mixed the version included on the 1969 World Wildlife Fund charity album Nothing's Gonna Change Our World. Paul was livid at the lush overdubs to "The Long and Winding Road". In 2003, Paul completely remixed the album as Let It Be... Naked, producing a rawer, more stripped down sound that he claimed was closer to the band's original vision. Because of the bad memories it stirred in the surviving Beatles, the accompanying film was not shown publicly between 1981 and 2021, when it was re-mastered during production of The Beatles: Get Back.
  • Abbey Road was more productive, as the band knew it would be their last work together. Still, tensions were high, with John Lennon bringing Yoko Ono to the sessions and her clashing with the other Beatles, John and Paul having an extensive argument, and Paul's obsession on fine-tuning "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" displeasing the other members.
• The Blue Nile have had several examples.
  • Their first album, A Walk Across The Rooftops, was, for the band, their least stressful recording. For everyone else, it was 5 months of chaos:
    • The trio had recorded a demo in Castlesound Studios. Producer Calum Malcom was approached by Linn Products in 1983, which wasn't a record company in the traditional sense. Instead, they were a producer of hi-fi stereo and recording equipment whose sole experience in recording was that of classical and jazz works. Malcom had already been working with Linn in the past and chose a song off of The Blue Nile's demo, which impressed the executives. Linn then devised an offer to the band to record an album.
    • The band took over 9 months to respond, leading Linn to all but forget about them. Vocalist Paul Buchanan was nervous about accepting the deal as he was just starting to learn guitar at the time.
    • When Linn gave The Blue Nile limitless funds and time, the band went crazy like kids just discovering new toys. They played around with experimental recording techniques, some of which were barely even used on the album in the longrun^note  such as how some synth effects would sound if they were underwater. Studio time was also used on songwriting, something that Linn was not anticipating having to deal with.
    • When "Tinseltown In The Rain" was officially recorded, it was decided that the synthesized strings already immediately dated the track and that live strings would be used. The Glasgow Symphony orchestra were commissioned and struggled with adapting their classical training to the then-new genre of synth pop. ^note  Buchanan recalled seeing some of them practicing between takes, trying to get the feel down .
    • Buchanan's initial vocal recordings were also unsatisfactory, leading to Malcom insisting Buchanan redo them. Paul was standoff-ish at first, refusing to do additional takes, until right near the end of the production, where he blew everyone away with perfect one-take vocals.
    • Even the photoshoot for the album proved to be troubled. The band took their a photographer out around Glasgow, looking for the perfect place to pose. The photographer had a malfunctioning power generator for his lighting rig and the band was indecisive about where they were going to shoot the cover. They ultimately decided on a church, to which they were getting hassled by old ladies trying to get them to join.
    • Though critics loved the album, it failed to sell very well. Not helping matters was Linn's hesitation to allow the album a CD pressing. The music was too elaborate to perform in a live setting with the available technology at the time. Linn were not pleased with the money-sink the album had become^note  at first they figured it would make for a good commercial for their products, showing what they were capable of. However, the lackluster sales did not recoup the costs and Linn estimated their stereo and recording equipment hardly benefited from the album's reception. This would lead to the issues that would make it's successor much more of a nightmare for the band.
  • Whenever fans look at the production time for the band's follow up album, Hats, they see that it took 5 years to produce. There's a reason for that.
    • Linn used funds invested from Virgin Records to publish A Walk Across The Rooftops, which lead to Virgin themselves taking an interest, investing money in The Blue Nile as well. Linn took the offer, hoping that they would be the ticket towards turning a profit off of the band. This proved to be the biggest downfall of the production.
    • The pressure from Virgin to record a follow-up was massive. The band hadn't even gotten to rest from having to promote the previous album when they were thrusted back to Castlesound. The boys were starting to miss their family and two of the members were facing crises^note  Robert Bell's father had just passed away and Buchanan's long-married parents were getting a divorce while he was facing a massive breakup himself . Virgin housed the trio in multiple unsatisfactory homes, in some cases the locals did not take kindly to them.
    • The band started recording sessions in 1985 and were not satisfied with anything they were coming up with. Stressed from the pressure and mistreatment from Virgin, they couldn't find the right space to create songs they were happy with. The members were vulnerable and not getting along.
    • Virgin hassled Linn for status updates on the album's recording. Linn was vague, as they didn't want to stress the band out any further. Virgin sent two executives down to check on things, one of whom had flown in from Los Angeles. They repeatedly asked Buchanan if they could hear what they had been working on, Buchanan ignored the question and tried to stick to small talk^note  Buchanan denies ever being this rude.
    • After a year and a half of unsatisfactory results, the band decided to wipe the slate clean and start over. Not wanting Virgin to get their hands on songs the band didn't want them to have, one of two things happened. The more commonly accepted story is that the tapes were simply wiped over. However, legend has it that the trio, in much need of catharsis, went out into a Scottish countryside and set the mastertapes on fire^note  Buchanan has left the answer up to the imaginations of fans. Only one song from these sessions, "From A Midnight Train", would make the final album^note  though one other track has survived via a bootleg leak.
    • Between 1986 and 1987, the band hammered out a few more of the tracks that would make the final release. In another strange meeting, a Virgin executive asked to listen to "Downtown Lights" and said the timing of Paul's vocals seemed off^note  the moment where he first says "How do I know you feel it?". The executive said he was going to show them where the put the actual vocal entrance and asked for the vocals to be turned off and the song to be played back. He counted in where the vocals "should" have come in and the trio had to avoid laughing at him until he left; the reason: the moment he said the line should come in matched where it was already starting.
    • Finally fed up with the lack of progress on the album, Virgin stopped funding it's production and instead paid Castlesound to record It's Immaterial's 2nd album Song, keeping the studio and their producer's hands tied. The kicker? Song had a production that was also troubled and kept The Blue Nile out of the studio for a full year.
    • On top of this, Virgin records were suing the Blue Nile for lack of a finished product and alleged waste of studio time and money. The band claimed they had actually been underpaid.
    • The band were forced to recoup in Glasgow, where they staid in a flat rented by keyboardist PJ Moore. There, they finished the writing of the rest of the songs with ease, being freed from Virgin's predatory pressure.
    • When It's Immaterial freed up Castlesound, the band finished out the final touches on the songs, including adding string sections and horns. This angered Virgin as they didn't want any more money spent on the album.
    • The album was released to massive critical acclaim and commercial success, but the drama effectively ended the working relationship between Linn, Virgin, and The Blue Nile.
  • Peace At Last also had many troubles of it's own:
    • The band finally had a break after touring for Hats (which had a troubled production in and of itself). During this time, Paul Buchanan started practicing guitar more, becoming more fascinated with acoustic ballads. PJ Moore and Robert Bell had started to take a liking to funk music, which is part of what lead to the album's weird genre shifts.
    • Buchanan started making rounds with celebrity elite's, dating Rosana Arquette. This lead to him meeting Warner Bros Records Mogul Mo Ostin. Ostin took a liking to Paul and the band and offers to give them a deal with Warner. They had limitless budget and time, as Ostin understood the band's need for long production times.
    • PJ Moore became a computer enthusiast and he took more of a production role on the album. This lead to him having his face buried in a CRT monitor and not having much interaction with Buchanan and Bell.
    • Not wanting to feel trapped in a single studio like with the previous albums, the band recorded in many different locations scattered across Europe. This lead to them at one point recording in a studio that didn't have a ceiling and having to rent out a local theater to record. Buchanan later stated he wished they had just stuck with a single location.
    • Bell and Moore started feeling like the band had simply become a vehicle for Buchanan's growing celebrity. The album cover was just an image of Buchanan on a horse and only a single image of Robert Bell appeared on the sleeve. Moore was nowhere in sight. Buchanan also took charge of the songwriting and delayed much of the album with his many film scoring gigs. This lead to the contention that would cause the band's demise years later.
    • In the middle of production, Ostin left Warner Records, which itself was left a victim of the great record label mergers of the mid to late 90s. Suddenly all the freedom the band was given was stripped from them and Warner would go on to mistreat them in different ways than Virgin.
    • Wanting a 1995 release, they wrapped up production in September, just to be told by Warner that it was too late to get a release before Christmas that year. Warner further scorned the band by choosing the album's lesser accessible songs as singles, leading to commercial underperformance.
    • In another bizarre twist, Buchanan was approached by director Joel Schumacher to have one of the songs featured in his 1996 film A Time To Kill. Warner denied Schumacher's idea and went with a more contemporary act to use in the scene, then ended up using a generic choir when that fell through. Buchanan felt scorned by this.
• The Blue Öyster Cult were originally formed with the intention of realising Sandy Perlman's dream of turning his imaginative myth-cycle Imaginos into a full-blown rock epic. While material and ideas from Imaginos found their way onto the band's first few recorded albums (especially 1974's Secret Treaties), the whole idea was largely forgotten and sidelined at their peak of big-venue commercial success, and an attempt to revive the original conceit is thought to have contributed to the original line-up splitting in some acrimony. When an LP called Imaginos was finally released in 1988, only two members of the original lineup remained, and the LP was put together with 80% of the input made by disinterested session musicians. The track listing told no coherent story, the record company realised it had a turkey on its hands, and the LP is not considered to be the band's finest hour. Very little from this album makes it into live concerts and nothing has escaped as part of any "Greatest Hits" collections.
• Blur:
  • 13 was marked by tense sessions. According to producer William Orbit, "There was a battle between Damon's more experimental direction, and Graham's punk one, and Graham prevailed. If that tension had been growing on previous LPs, it came to a head here." "Things were starting to fall apart between the four of us," drummer Dave Rowntree later revealed. "It was quite a sad process making it. People were not turning up to the sessions, or turning up drunk, being abusive and storming off." "I had songs," Alex James remarked. "I played them to William. He liked them. But I was sulking. I didn't play them to the others… Now I know how George Harrison felt." Graham Coxon admitted, "I was really out there around 13, which made for some pretty great noise but I was probably a bit of a crap to be around."
  • Think Tank's production was largely affected by Coxon confronting his demons as he was suffering from alcoholism and depression, causing him to be largely absent from the production and after recording four songs (one of which ultimately made it to the final cut, along with two being B-sides and the last one being a fan club single), he left, forcing the band to continue as a trio. It went From Bad to Worse during the production in Morocco as everyone involved except for Damon Albarn fell ill due to diarrhea to the point Rowntree nearly died as a result. While the album proved to be a critical and commercial success, it's because of this production that the band took a break from 2004 to 2008 and Albarn has considered this a very difficult album to work on.
• In addition to the problems that plagued David Bowie's 1974 Diamond Dogs tour, David Live had some additional troubles of its own:
  • Bowie's backup band learned of the intent to record the shows at Philadelphia's Tower Theatre only a few hours before the first one. Since recording a live album had not been provided for by their contracts, they threatened to walk out, and stuck to their guns when Bowie's initial offer was too low. Finally, after he promised them $5,000 each, they agreed to play. However, the bad taste the whole experience had left in their mouth affected their performances to an extent that is audible on the album.
  • But at least those performances were audible. As the album's notes admit, some of the backing vocals had to be overdubbed after recording since the singers were often too far from the microphone, and later it was divulged that this issue had affected some of the sax parts as well.
  • Many critics have also taken issue with Bowie's new arrangements of his songs, and his singing (probably a result of the already-stressful tour). Bowie admitted in retrospect that the cover image makes him look dead. Despite these shortcomings, the album is still essential listening as it captures Bowie as he transitioned from the Ziggy Stardust sound and persona^note he later described this album as the "final death" of Ziggy to the more soul-influenced sound of Young Americans.
• Broken Hope had one hell of a time recording Grotesque Blessings. Between firing Ryan Stanek for stealing merch money and ripping off fans and going through several drummers and getting dropped from Metal Blade Records after being treated poorly by the label, the situation was a shitshow to begin with, but it got worse after the recording started thanks to a revolving door of bassists and general dysfunction within the band. The album got good reviews and led to multiple fruitful tours, but the damage was done and the band broke up not long after.
• Jeff Buckley had both a very notable aversion and straight-forward example of this. Grace is one of the most easy-going recordings in popular music history, while Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk is an entirely different story.
  • Buckley first recorded several songs in Manhattan with Television guitarist Tom Verlaine as producer in 1996 and early 1997, but he and his band were dissatisfied with the results, and some tension plagued these sessions due to the band's changing lineup (Grace drummer Matt Johnson bolted after the first recordings, and was replaced with Parker Kindred).
  • Buckley and the band took another hack at recording the songs with Verlaine in Memphis in February, but he was dissatisfied with the results again and fired Verlaine, asking Grace producer Andy Wallace to return as a replacement. He continued to record several 4-track demos in preparation for the session with Wallace, and sent his band back to New York while he stayed behind to work, mailing them the results (much to their excitement).
  • The band was scheduled to return to Memphis for rehearsals and recording on 29 May 1997, but on that evening Buckley accidentally drowned in the Wolf River. The album was ultimately released posthumously as a double album, with the first CD containing all the previously-recorded, Verlaine-produced material Buckley had rejected, and the second CD containing Buckley's unfinished home demos.
  • The album is generally considered good, but really jarring, as the potential the album could have had brings sadness to many listeners. What also didn't help was that the producer they sent in was really pushing for hits to be written. Grace suffered slight sales disappointment in the eyes of Sony. Imagine the producer's insistence on hits combined with Buckley's perfectionism. That's what amounted to this album being recorded. This is where Buckley's famous quote "I write music for people who are crying on the highway to a blasting stereo" came from.

C

• Captain Beefheart (Don Glenn [Van] Vliet). Hoo, boy... The recording of Trout Mask Replica is close to being an ultimate example of the trope.
  • Beefheart wanted the band to "live" his music, and so, he got all the musicians living in a small, dilapidated rented house for eight months. The house had only two bedrooms, one (bigger) was occupied by Beefheart, the other shared by the remaining four musicians, who were strictly restricted from leaving the house and forced to practice for at least 14 hours a day.
  • The composition itself was difficult. Beefheart had no musical education and could not read notes - on purpose - so his "compositions" were actually, in many cases, little more than piano chords created by Captain hitting ten different keys simultaneously. Sometimes, it took weeks to transpose the chord onto a guitar and figure out a way to play it properly. In the end, although the other musicians played a key role in arranging all the songs, all music, lyrics and arrangements were credited to Beefheart alone.
  • The recording was an ultimate nightmare. Beefheart demanded an absolute submission from all his accompanying players, and so, at various times one or another of the group members was "put in the barrel", with Van Vliet berating him continually, sometimes for days, until the musician collapsed in tears or in total submission. The musicians were so broken spiritually that, when Beefheart started attacking one of them, they joined in just not to be the next to face the anger. Drummer John French recalled an accident where he didn't play a drum break the way the boss wanted; first Beefheart scolded him and punched him in the face, then the other musicians started beating him just to calm the Captain down (including beating the drummer with a broomstick until it broke), and finally Beefheart told him that the next time French would be thrown out of a window.
  • The financial situation (of the musicians, but not Beefheart) was dire to say the least. French remembers living on a small cup of beans daily for at least a month. A friend who visited their house stated that the musicians were looking cadaverous. Eventually they resorted to shoplifting to survive; on one occasion, when they got caught, Frank Zappa (who served as the album's producer) had to bail them out (at Beefheart's request - just because the sessions had to be put on a halt had they remained in jail).
  • At one point Jeff Cotton (the guitarist) escaped for a few weeks after a heated argument with French; the drummer, who had thrown a metal cymbal at Cotton, ran after him yelling that he too wanted to get out. Both of them later felt compelled to return. The bassist Mark Boston at one point hid clothes in a field across the street, planning his own getaway.
  • By the end of the sessions, John French did dare to play something not the way Beefheart imagined it. He was fired from the band and, despite playing a major role in converting Beefheart's loose and foggy ideas into music, he was not credited on the album cover either as a musician or as an arranger. Oh, and Beefheart announced his firing by kicking French down a flight of stairs.
• Most fans of Cat Power (real name: Chan Marshall, first name pronounced "Shaun") agree that naming just one album of hers would be a tall order (especially considering her erratic nature due to struggles with addictions and mental health), most will agree that 2012's Sun is the most notable example and also the most surprising example (given that it came after she cleaned up her act).
  • In 2006, Marshall experienced tons of critical and commercial success with The Greatest, and in an interview stated that she was all ready to go to record the next album and even went so far as to say that "Sun" was going to be the title. She also claimed most of the album was already written and that after finally having gotten away with lengthy financial issues including house foreclosure and bakruptcy, she was going to finance the album herself.
  • However, most of what was already written, which she had begun recording after spending eight months building a studio in her Malibu home, was junked after a friend told her that the music was too depressing, and Marshall clearly didn't disagree, going so far as to call it "too painful and personal to put out".
  • Then she faced pressure from her label Matador, and even lawsuits due to the fact that she was so inactive. So to release something, she gathered her band The Delta Blues and recorded and released a covers album in 2008 called Jukebox (which even had a reworking of one of her old songs "Metal Heart").
  • After the tour for Jukebox, she resumed work on Sun on what was more electronic tinged material. Problem was, not only was she working with a producer for the first time in fifteen years, but she couldn't play a piano, let alone compose on a keyboard. Furthermore, her focus on building a relationship with her boyfriend Giovanni Ribisi only complicated the creative process.
  • Then in 2011, she finally regrouped the Delta Blues for a tour where she'd perform ten tracks of unreleased material (four of which would end up on the album). Unfortunately, she only had skeletons of songs to work with and only one song ("Ruin") would end up having contributions from the Delta Blues.
  • She then broke up with Giovanni Ribisi, flew to Paris and worked with Philippe Zdar (former Beastie Boys engineer) to finish the album. Zdar had to work pro bono, but thankfully this ended up being mended.
  • And post-release was certainly no cake walk either. Health issues struck Marshall again (severe ones too) and Marshall would end up having to cancel the European tour supporting the album.
• Doctor Who 'trock' band, Chameleon Circuit, experienced a hard time making their two albums. They were forced to release their first album unfinished because their producer left them. Their second album, their new producer, Michael Aranda, was stuck in France for two months, because the border officials won't let him go to London. Their second album was number 23 in the US Heat chart.
• The Clash may be one of the most passionate and outspoken bands of all time, but that passion certainly made the production of their albums a living hell for anyone working with them. Almost every album they made qualifies for this trope.
  • The Clash presented the group's relative inexperience making a record. The DIY nature of the production rattled their record company, CBS. Aside from not knowing how to handle the control knobs, there were equipment issues out the wazoo. This was before the days where punk albums became known for their rough production standards. The album is recognized as one of the greatest punk albums of all time.
  • Give 'em Enough Rope presented the band having to deal again with CBS records. The first record sold well in the UK, but the label thought it was unsuitable for US release. This resulted in their first sessions for the album to be declined by the label. The band was instructed that additional time would need to be spent recording in San Francisco. Drummer Topper Headon and bassist Paul Simonon were left in the UK while Joe Strummer and Mick Jones flew to the US to continue production. The two, unfamiliar with the country, spent a lot of time wasting money and time exploring San Francisco. Around this time Mick started displaying his notorious prima donna attitude, making unusual demands that would stick until his leaving the band. On top of that, the album's producer, Sandy Pearlman, who was gay, found himself the victim of relentless pranks pulled by the band and their chaotic manager Bernie Rhodes. The album was released to mild critical acclaim, though not as beloved as the first.
  • Sandinista! came off the heels off of the critical smash London Calling. The band bounced off their previous record by diving even more into the world music trend that was taking over in the 80s. This confused the label, who wanted a more clear musical direction. Paul ended up taking time away from production to star in the film Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains. He was temporarily replaced by Norman Watt-Roy of Ian Dury and The Blockheads fame. Watt-Roy composed the memorable bassline for "The Magnificent Seven", for which he claims he was never credited. Also, fellow Producer Mikey Dread claims he was never paid for work he did on the album either. The revolving door of producers made for a mess for crediting on the album. On top of that, the band produced so much music that they wanted to make a 3-LP album, of which everyone involved in the production thought was overambitious. The label only agreed to do it after the band begrudgingly forfeited the royalties for the first 100,000 copies sold. To this day the album is a difficult listen at 145 minutes. Some consider it the band's masterpiece, others think it has some of their best moments, but it's overlong.
  • Combat Rock came after the band were slammed by CBS for the poor commercial performance of Sandinista! After spending 2 albums managing themselves, Joe Strummer decided to re-hire Bernie Rhodes. A polarizing figure, Rhodes' return was met with both praise and disdain from band members (Mick Jones in particular was not fond of him). Mick's antics polluted this album, with him getting into raging arguments with Joe (one person who worked on the album noted that they left the band to work on the mixing for "Rock The Casbah" at 2 AM and returned in the morning to them still having the same argument). Around this time, Topper Headon's drug addiction became even worse than it ever had been. Upon returning to London after a successful show, he was stopped by customs who found heroin in his possession. This created even more tension between members and was considered an embarrassment for the band that refused to promote the use of hard drugs. Topper would soon be dismissed from the band due to his drug habits. Paul also came down with a nasty stomach bug that almost claimed his life. When deciding on mixing, the band chose the legendary Glyn Johns. On Johns' first day, he had finished mixing 3 songs when Mick arrived late despite Johns' clear directions. Mick whined about disliking the mixes for all 3 of them, to which the usual mild tempered Johns flipped, attempting to put Mick in his place. After the album was released, Rhodes came up with the moronic idea of having Joe stage a disappearance to give the album more publicity. Joe went against Rhodes' original plan and disappeared in Paris, leading to many to think Joe had legitimately disappeared. While he thankfully returned in one piece, the album was the band's most financially successful album, being their first and only top 10 album in the United States.
  • Cut the Crap was made after a troubled tour which resulted in the sacking of both Topper Headon for drug problems and Mick Jones for his prima donna attitude. With 2 major slots replaced, the band's sound drastically changed and the album was made with very little direction. It was actually Bernie Rhoades who bizarrely took over the musical direction, with the sound being more electronic than previous albums. The new members bumped heads with Rhoades' antics and band politics were so frail that by the end of production, The Clash was no more. It's often regarded as the worst in the band's discography, even if it's looked at as ahead of its time in some circles.
• The final Cocteau Twins album Milk And Kisses was described as a living hell by their record label as Liz Fraser and Robin Guthrie were going at each other's throats throughout (the two had previously been in a relationship, but Fraser had suffered a breakdown after it collapsed and Guthrie had sought treatment for drug and alcohol abuse), with Simon Raymonde - who was not only a member of the band but the owner of their record label, Bella Union - stuck in the middle.
• Creed seem to be a magnet to troubled productions, due in no short part to the antics of Scott Stapp:
  • My Own Prison had issues getting off the ground due to the band's controversial first name (which will not be mentioned here) scaring off potential record labels. When they changed their name to Creed, the issues didn't stop. Stapp fell for a ponzi scheme and lost all the money they had gained from shows. Producer John Kurzweg loved their sound and rigged his kids' bedroom into a recording studio for them to play in. Scott remembers repeated takes in a cramped space surrounded by toys and a bunkbed. Despite the cheap production, the album would go on to sell millions of copies after exploding in popularity in Tallahassee, Florida.
  • Weathered started its production right off the heals off of 4 long years of the band touring and recording constantly. Production times vary but the longest time the band could have had for a break was 6 months, not long enough to save Weathered from the drama that would ensue. Due to bassist Brian Marshall getting sacked, Mark Tremonti was now playing double duty as bassist and primary guitarist. A rift had also formed between Stapp and the rest of the band due to him getting all the attention from fans and press. 9/11 happened mid-production, leading to some alterations in the lyrics and a delay in recording. Stapp also wanted higher production quality with more strings and orchestrations than in previous albums. The record label butted heads with him and his ego over these facts, feeling some of the songs were overwrought as a result. Weathered sold just as strongly as their other albums, though critics were starting to get tired of the band.
• Creedence Clearwater Revival's Mardi Gras broke a long-standing pattern for the band by coming out two years after their last, instead of the usual six months or so (1969 alone saw the release of Bayou Country, Green River and Willy and the Poor Boys). Over the course of those two years, John Fogerty's I Am the Band attitude caused the other three members to openly revolt and demand more control. Then Tom Fogerty quit anyway, taking with him 25% of the band. Then, for reasons that still aren't entirely clear, the decision was made that the next album would be an equal split in contributions between the three remaining members: Stu Cook and Doug Clifford would have to write, sing and produce their own songs, instead of John having full control. (Fogerty claims the other two demanded the chance to write their own songs; Cook and Clifford originally said Fogerty asked them for help because he was so burnt out, then pivoted to insisting that it was more of an ultimatum, intended to punish them; and both sides have clear motives to paint themselves as the wronged party and the other as the asshole(s) who doomed CCR.) The resultant album was, unsurprisingly, an absolute mess that crashed spectacularly, the band broke up not too long afterwards, apart from a couple of very short-lived reunions, and Cook, Clifford and Fogerty would cheerfully piss on each other's graves to this day.

D

• Dance Gavin Dance's tenth studio album, Jackpot Juicer, had a promotional cycle that was mired in bad luck, controversy, and tragedy.
  • Before the album was recorded, Dance Gavin Dance went on their very delayed Afterburner tour in summer 2021, which was one of the first major tours to happen past 2020. While it was a success, it was plagued with members of the various bands on the tour contracting Covid-19. The worst was drummer Matt Mingus going through a patch of substance abuse and having to sit out the tour. While he bounced back, it was a sign of things to come.
  • In early 2022 the band started rolling out singles to promote Jackpot Juicer and the second Swanfest. Tragically, long time bassist Tim Feerick passed away on April 13th, 2022, just ten days before Swanfest. The band opted continue with the festival and all scheduled tours, feeling like it would be the best way to honor Feerick's legacy.
  • Later in June 2022, sexual misconduct allegations were laid on clean singer, Tillian Pearson. Dance Gavin Dance was quick to denounce his actions and forced Pearson to get professional help. With the album being released just a month away, the band made a statement that Pearson's vocals would still be included in Jackpot Juicer. For shows, Andrew Wells (Eidola) and former vocalist Kurt Travis would be sharing clean vocal duties.
  • Dance Gavin Dance was also to be direct support for Coheed and Cambria, but they got thrown off that bill, which caused backlash on Twitter and Reddit, with many fans requesting refunds. Dance Gavin Dance would state in an update that it was not their choice to be kicked off the Coheed and Cambria tour.
• The production of Death's Spiritual Healing and its surrounding promotion were very troublesome, to say the least. The band (including manager Eric Greif) spent the entire six weeks that it took to record the album living out of a motel room right down the road from Busch Gardens in Tampa, where frontman Chuck Schuldiner and James Murphy fought constantly. Relations with Terry Butler and Bill Andrews weren't much better, and just about every party involved has said that it's a miracle that the band even stayed together during this time. It got worse post-release, as Schuldiner refused to embark on a European tour due to what he felt was terrible routing (there was some precedent for this, as their previous European tour had been a disaster). Andrews and Butler decided to do it anyways and enlisted a pair of roadies to fill in the absent spots, which resulted in an enraged Schuldiner taking legal action and firing them from the band. It's likely that this was the reason why Schuldiner chose to use session musicians from that point forward so as to never have to deal with that type of internecine again.
• Death Grips' No Love Deep Web was plagued with post-production issues. After promising a second album in the physical copies of their previous album The Money Store for fall 2012, Epic Records decided to force the band to postpone the release of their second album until "sometime in 2013". Unwilling to disappoint fans, the band pressed hard to get it released on time, but Epic failed to comply. After several problematic Facebook and Twitter updates, the band made the decision to leak the album for free on October 1, 2012. Epic responded by trying to sue Death Grips and reportedly resulted in the shutdown of their website (it is still disputed on if the band did this themselves or if it was Epic). The band also gave the album highly controversial artwork (a picture of the drummer's penis with the album's title written in marker). The scandal caused a lot of media buzz which only did Death Grips the favor of making them more well-known. The album finally saw a quiet release in 2013 with its original intended artwork.
• Deep Purple's most familiar song was inspired by a troubled production. And it wasn't their only experience with the trope:
  • The 1972 album Machine Head is one of the most famous musical examples of this trope, mainly because it included, as a last minute addition, the iconic song telling the story of how the band struggled to get the album together in time with a mobile recording studio in Montreux, Switzerland: "Smoke on the Water", a reference to the smoke over Lake Geneva after the first location they wanted to use, a casino, was destroyed in a horrible flaregun accident involving Frank Zappa. First of all, they wanted to use the local casino to record. The night before, Frank Zappa was playing there ("Frank Zappa and the Mothers/Were at the best place around"), but a drunken fan fired a flaregun into its roof, destroying it ("but some stupid with a flaregun/Burnt the place to the ground"). So, they "ended up at the Grand Hotel" with their "Rolling truck Stone thing just outside" (the mobile studio was rented from The Rolling Stones), hastily converted into a studio. The jury-rigged studio, the looming deadline ("Swiss time was running out/It seemed that we would lose the race") and the hit guitar riff it spawned ensured this particular Troubled Production entered rock legend.
  • While that entry is really just about one song, the band's next album, Who Do We Think We Are, more genuinely fits the mold. There were no technical problems, but the band was literally sick and tired by this point. Literally, in that they'd been touring and recording for several years nonstop; they were all terribly burned out and several members' health had suffered as a result (Ian Gillan said that the band's management should really have made them all take three months off, but was worried they couldn't finish the next album by the contractually obligated deadline). That sick and tired, inevitably, spilled over into being sick and tired of each other, and they stopped talking. Studio time had to be carefully budgeted and planned so that members could record their parts without accidentally running into each other. While the ensuing album yielded one of their classics, "Woman from Tokyo," Gillan left after it was finished and that classic lineup of the band would not record and tour together again for a decade.
• Deerhunter had this happen to both of their first two albums.
  • Their first album, Turn It Up Faggot has very few production details shared with the public. What is known is that apparently the album was "the result of a lot of negative energy" and the band's bassist passed away in the middle of production.
  • They went in to record their second album, Cryptograms, in New York in 2005, not long after the release of Turn It Up Faggot. The sessions failed heavily, due to lead vocalist Bradford Cox being ill with the flu. They dealt with an out-of-tune piano and an uncalibrated tape recorder. Cox described these sessions as being like listening to My Bloody Valentine's Loveless on shrooms. The tracks were left on a scratchy CD-R that Cox kept under his bed and the band quietly released it for free on their blog. They then got acquainted with punk band, Liars, who encouraged them to go back in and record again. These recordings went better with the exception of one thing, the very stressed out band were arguing about Creative Differences. The album was finally released in 2007; two years later than planned. It was met with generally favorable and some mixed reviews, but has gone on to be Vindicated by History a bit.
• Def Leppard's most successful album, 1987's Hysteria, suffered from an immensely troubled production.
  • They began working on it in late 1983 after completing the tour for their previous album Pyromania, aware that they'd likely struggle to top a Diamond-certified album. Robert John "Mutt" Lange, whose work as producer had played no small part in Pyromania's success, was burned out from several years of steady work and had to take a break before recording even began. Meanwhile, Executive Meddling resulted in the recruitment of Jim Steinman as producer over the band's objections; they soon clashed, with Steinman wanting a rawer sound more of the moment, while the band wanted to stick with the more polished sound that had brought them so much success. When Steinman failed to produce anything meaningful other than an early version of "Don't Shoot Shotgun" with the group he was sacked, but still had to be paid. The band attempted to produce the album themselves with the help of Lange's engineer, but sessions through 1984 were fruitless.
  • Disaster struck on New Year's Eve, 1984, when drummer Rick Allen was involved in a car accident that resulted in the loss of his left arm, but he was determined to continue playing the drums with one arm and set about learning to play a modified electronic kit. Eventually they finished the album with a returning Lange—although they weren't done with health issues yet. Production was further delayed both by another car accident which seriously injured Lange, and then singer Joe Elliott came down with the mumps.
  • By the time of its 1988 release it had gone so far over its budget that they barely covered its costs in spite of selling about three million copies. They didn't catch a break until "Pour Some Sugar On Me" was released as the fourth single and propelled the album back to the top of the charts.
• Happened twice to Dexys Midnight Runners:
  • Their first album, Searching for the Young Soul Rebels, was plagued with pay issues so bad that one of the band members walked out of a recording session. Lacking proper equipment made recording stressful and the band grew very frustrated with the record company. When it was finished, the band stole the master tapes and were planning on selling them to the black market to spite the label. When the label finally offered enough royalty compensation, the band returned the tapes and very narrowly dodged a Missing Episode when the tapes were risked being completely wiped in the England underground.
  • Don't Stand Me Down was under-budgeted for the band's size, leaving Kevin Rowland having to fire half of his band. The group was now centered around a nucleus of three members (down from ten): Rowland, violinist Helen O'Hara and guitarist Billy Adams. This change in personel had a radical effect in how the group worked as a unit: While Rowland was still the unquestioned leader of the band, Adams and O'Hara were also heavily involved with the artistic direction of the album. The record company wanted a repeat of what made Too-Rye-Ay such a hit, but the band were venturing in a surprisingly different, and more experimental, sound that the label didn't approve of. When pestered for a single, Rowland refused, and when the label refused to release the album without a single, Rowland specifically chose the 12-minute-long epic off of the album. The album is now oft-regarded as the band's best (though it took having to be Vindicated by History for that to happen).
• Diamond Rio had a very rough start:
  • Having already undergone several membership changes in their formative years, the band (then known as the Tennessee River Boys) was then fronted by Lead Bassist Matt Davenport until a producer convinced them that backing vocalist Marty Roe should sing lead instead. This caused Davenport to quit just before a scheduled appearance on the talk show Nashville Now. After Alan LaBoeuf of Baillie & the Boys turned down the role, they were ultimately able to land Dana Williams just in time. The band had been recommended to Tim DuBois, who had just founded the Nashville branch of Arista Records in 1989; DuBois initially didn't want to sign the band because he had already signed two others, but agreed to sign the band if they changed their name; they chose Diamond Rio, a misspelling of a truck company.^note Incidentally, the same company was the source of the name for REO Speedwagon
  • Right after the band signed in 1990, mandolinist Gene Johnson cut his thumb in a carpentry accident, while Williams had his legs slashed in a water-skiing accident, and lead guitarist Jimmy Olander developed a tumor on his esophagus. While all three men successfully healed, the thumb injury altered the way Johnson played mandolin, and he nearly quit the group when their producer suggested that Roe sing his own harmonies instead of having Johnson harmonize. Publicity photo shoots also presented a problem, as the photographers had a very hard time coming up with suitable shots that featured all six members. In addition, the band had prior commitments to finish under their old name, and at least once they had to perform under both names in the same day. Fortunately, everything worked out in the end, as their 1991 debut single "Meet in the Middle" marked the first time in history that a band had sent its debut single to #1 on the country charts, and they would go on to have a large catalog of hits well into the 21st century.
• The Dillinger Escape Plan had this happen a few times over their career:
  • While they were recording their first album Calculating Infinity, their bassist was in a car accident which left him paralysed. Lead guitarist Ben Weinman was forced to record the basslines himself.
  • The lead up to Ire Works was a difficult one. Brian Benoit injured his hand and had to leave the band. Without him mediating the group, tensions between band leader Ben Weinman and drummer Chris Pennie would get worse, to the point that the two would go from talking to screaming at each other over the most trivial things. It got to the point where Weinman had to leave the band during a tour with AFI, both because he and Pennie could not get along and to deal with numerous injuries he'd accumulated over the years. Pennie would ultimately leave the band to join Coheed and Cambria. Singer Greg Puciato thought it was the end of the band, as Pennie was one of the few drummers out there who could track the complicated material the band usually wrote. After a bit of searching, Gil Sharone came in to track Ire Works.
  • One of Us Is The Killer and Dissociation were notable for the tensions between Weinman and Puciato reaching their apex. Puciato even said that many songs from the former were about the worsening relationship between him and the band, as well as relationships outside the band and music. While both albums were critical and commercial successes and lead to many tours, the band decided to split at the end of 2017. It hasn’t been outright said, but its been heavily implied that the worsening relationship between Weinman and Puciato played a small part into their disbanding.
• The Dixie Chicks have ended up in several of these.
  • Home was nowhere near as bad as most examples on this page. The recording process itself was really quiet and pleasant for the trio. What did go wrong, however, was Sony, their original record company, trying to sue the life out of them due to accounting issues. Lead singer Natalie Maines cited that the drama stirring from the lawsuit caused Home to be more stressful than she expected. A few other hiccups occurred, including the 9-11 attacks causing record executives to be iffy about some of the subject matter of the songs. The album also almost didn't happen because Sony wanted to claim ownership of it. It ended up becoming the Chicks' most critically and commercially successful album. Despite this, the band was the target of negative publicity when Maines said at a concert in London that she was ashamed to be from the same state as then-president George W. Bush, creating a massive backlash in the then very conservative and very pro-war country music fandom. This caused the single "Travelin' Soldier" to plummet from the #1 position, and original follow up "Truth No. 2" was canceled due to the lyric "You don't like the sound of the truth comin' from my mouth". It was instead traded out for a cover of Radney Foster's "Godspeed (Sweet Dreams)", which only got to #48.
  • Taking The Long Way also proved to be fairly troubled as well. This time not because of lawsuits, but because of the incredibly negative press surrounding the band following the outburst. Record producers and executives were hesitant to touch the band's music. Several magazines and newspapers lashed out at the possibility of the band releasing a new album, even though three years had passed. The Chicks decided to ride the controversy even more by posing nude for Rolling Stone magazine (covered up of course) and having Maines detract her apology for her outburst. Other problems included having a massive song selection, leaving four whole tracks on the cutting room floor (which to this day haven't even surfaced in bootleg form) as well as some arguments with producers over the "non-traditional" views of the lyrics. The album, while massively ignored by country fans at the time, got them new respect from Europeans and got them charting on Rock and Pop charts instead.
• The original Doobie Brothers who were still in the band at that point recall the recording of Minute by Minute as "fraught".
  • There were no technical issues with the recording, but the band's unrelenting schedule of alternating touring and recording had taken its toll on their personal relationships after almost a decade. "We were all pretty sick of each other", said bassist Tiran Porter.
  • That schedule had already cost them founding vocalist Tom Johnston, who'd more or less left the band when he came down with a serious bleeding ulcer in 1976. His replacements within the band were guitarist Jeff "Skunk" Baxter and vocalist/keyboardist Michael McDonald. At first it seemed like the band wouldn't break stride, as McDonald's "Takin' it to the Streets" became a huge hit for the band. However, the ensuing album, prophetically titled Livin' on the Fault Line, despite having been a rewarding experience for the band to record as they got used to their new bandmates and began to appreciate what they were bringing to the studio from their previous experiences with Steely Dan, became their first album to not produce a hit single ... unless you count "You Belong To Me", which McDonald had cowritten with Carly Simon. Her version was a hit.
  • So the record company was, shall we say, very expectant when the Doobies returned to the studio to record again. The more esoteric directions Baxter favored came up against McDonald's pop sensibilities ... with the latter winning. Baxter and drummer John Hartman left between the album and ensuing tour.
  • McDonald did, however, succeed in getting the band another hit single ... and then some. "What a Fool Believes" was one of the biggest non-disco singles of 1979, winning a Grammy for Song of the Year in the process. However, it had taken 48 takes to get right, and McDonald's perfectionism got even more rigid on tour. After one night when some of the backing vocals on the song's chorus had been noticeably flat, he took it upon himself to fire everybody else afterwards.
  • The Doobies' renewed success from this album came at a great cost. longtime fans disliked the new sound (listen to this album, especially its singles, and try to convince yourself that the band making it was once more or less the house band at Hells' Angels parties in the Bay Area) seeing the Doobies as following the general trend of bands that had started out Darker and Edgier in the early 1970s becoming noticeably mellow later in the decade after they had all moved to LA. Porter and another key early member, Pat Simmons, left after the next album, One Step Closer for precisely this reason^note OK, Porter's cocaine addiction didn't help, either, and as there were pretty much none of the original members left at that point the band broke up and McDonald began his solo career.
• Dream Theater's 1997 album Falling Into Infinity nearly led to the end of the band. If it weren't for the Executive Meddling, it would have been a completely different album. Here is an account of what went down:
  • After their 1994 album Awake was released, it was a critical and commercial hit, but not on the level of 1992's Images and Words. Plus, it didn't feature a hit single that matched the commercial success of "Pull Me Under". So Dream Theater's record label at the time Elektra Records wanted to make sure their next album had a radio-ready hit.
  • But trouble was going on with Elektra Records. The executives for the company that supported the band and allowed them to record their music how they wanted to were let go from the company. In came in a bunch of record executives that were more focused on the hottest music trends at the time, like alternative rock, hip hop, and boy bands. These new executives treated Dream Theater as a one-hit wonder past their prime.
  • Since the label wanted a more radio-friendly album, they wanted to Dream Theater to make their next album a collection of potential singles. Dream Theater was going to do an ambitious double album and they spent 1995 and 1996 writing enough material to fill two CDs. But the record label ordered to band to go back to the drawing board and make it fit on one CD. This meant the band had to cut songs off the album like "Raise The Knife", "The Way It Used To Be", "Speak To Me", and "Metropolis Pt. 2", where the last song was turned into their next album.
  • The record label pretty much flat-out told the band they wanted the hits. While John Pertucci and James LaBrie supported the decision, and John Myung and Derek Sherinian were neutral on the idea, Mike Portnoy was furious and wanted to keep the band's progressive sound that made them famous in the first place. The record label also elected Pertucci to fly to California to work with songwriter Desmond Child (famous for hits like "I Was Made For Loving You" and "Living On A Prayer") to rework the song "You Or Me", which became "You Not Me".
  • Also, Mike Portnoy's alcoholism was spiraling out of control at this point and James LaBrie was still struggling to recover his voice after blowing out his vocal cords from a food poisoning incident back in 1994. Dealing with personal issues along with being in a conflict with his own band members and the record label, Portnoy nearly left the band (which would have meant the end of the band, at the time), but the rest of the members convinced him to stay.
  • The actual recording of the album was rather peaceful for the most part. However when it was released, the album sold fewer copies than Awake and while it got decent reviews from critics, the majority of the fanbase hated the album (although not as much these days) and were afraid of the band selling-out and becoming a more radio-friendly rock/metal band. The album however was considered a commercial failure. While the band supported the album with a successful club/theater concert tour, the label only made one music video (for the song "Hollow Years") and they barely promoted the album in general. That's right, the label didn't want the band to release a commercial failure, yet Elektra Records were the main reason the album was a commercial failure. This whole debacle led to the band to force the label to allow creative freedom on all future albums, which they agreed to do. This freedom and a new keyboardist led the band to create their follow up. Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory.
• Duran Duran's Seven and the Ragged Tiger was definitely ragged:
  • The band quickly realized their worldwide success from Rio would not last forever. Margaret Thatcher's government still hadn't completely reformed the British tax code, so they decided to make the most of the opportunity by spending most of the next year overseas recording the album as tax exiles in France (John Taylor said the "change of scenery" was also his way of avoiding dealing with his escalating drug problems — which Andy Taylor was having as well).
  • Recording in France did not go smoothly, because the studio they used had horrible infrastructure. They had to play in an upstairs booth and check downstairs if the equipment was working; and there were no power outlets, so everything had to be hooked up with extension cords to a truck. When equipment broke down, replacements had to be shipped from London, dragging the process to a crawl.
  • They still laid down a few tracks, but the process was so slow and frustrating that they spent as much time recording as they did around the pool or cruising the restaurants and cafés in Cannes. John Taylor recalled every band member smoking a joint or rolling one at the time, which led to several tripped-out discussions about things like the snare drum part or the bass line.
  • The band eventually decamped to Montserrat, because they'd heard The Police were having a great time there finishing up Synchronicity. They did get more done, but the equipment was still inadequate, which upset Andy Taylor. Nick Rhodes was so stressed out he was hospitalized with an irregular heartbeat. Bills for their time at AIR Studios went unpaid until the main office in London warned them by mail that they would not be able to use the facilities there until they paid up. They began to worry they wouldn't be able to make their deadline for the album.
  • In the middle of this, they returned to Britain for the 1983 Prince's Trust benefit and another one in their hometown of Birmingham. The first one, performed before Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales (they were her favorite band), was greatly dragged down by all the stress from recording Seven, but it could have been worse—years later it was discovered that an informant had foiled an IRA bomb plot that night. The latter show, at Aston Villa's home field, Villa Park, went a lot better.
  • Due to the problems in Montserrat, they decided to finish the album in Australia, having greatly enjoyed their tour dates there the previous year. They did get it done on time, but the experience was so exhausting that John (who discovered ecstasy in Australia) and Andy Taylor seriously considered quitting the band afterwards. Instead, after the tour for Seven, the band members focused on side projects; the rifts that developed caused Andy and drummer Roger Taylor to leave the band after "A View to a Kill".
• Bob Dylan recorded all the songs for Blood on the Tracks in the course of a few days in New York in September 1974, and after making one notable change^note Taking the song "Call Letter Blues", which very explicitly addressed his marital troubles, and re-recording it as the much more generic "Meet Me in the Morning", sent it off to Columbia for a December release. Then, after listening to an acetate copy on his Minnesota farm a couple weeks before the album's release date, he decided he didn't like it and told Columbia to postpone the release. Shortly after Christmas he went to Minneapolis for a couple hastily-arranged dates with local musicians and re-recorded half the album ("Tangled Up in Blue", "You're a Big Girl Now", "Idiot Wind", "Lily, Rosemary & the Jack of Hearts", "If You See Her, Say Hello").

E

• While at least one member of Fleetwood Mac had an idea for what to do following a big mid-'70s success, none of the Eagles did. That's why it took them three years to record their follow-up to Hotel California. Appropriately titled The Long Run, it wound up ending the band's classic years.
  • The main problem was songwriting, ironic for a band that at that point included Joe Walsh and Timothy B. Schmit, both of whom had plenty of experience in that field from their previous gigs, in addition to the core group of Don Felder, Glenn Frey and Don Henley. The latter two recall serious difficulty sitting down and trying to come up with songs that would meet everyone's expectations for something that would top Hotel California. Their friendship took a serious hit, as they too often had some deadline to meet and couldn't really just sit down with each other and talk. Ultimately, plans for a double album were trimmed down to a single disc.
  • The Long Run was nevertheless a commercial success, giving the band three hit singles. Critics were not as pleased, noting the heavy production gloss and wondering what songs the band had discarded during the process. The burnout and stress from the preceding years of almost incessant recording and touring (both involving plenty of cocaine and other drugs) was also catching up to them, much as it also was for The Doobie Brothers on Minute by Minute at the same time. This, predictably led to interpersonal tensions that came out on the ensuing tour. The Eagles were invited to a benefit concert for Democratic California Senator Alan Cranston, whom Frey and Henley were supporting. Don Felder's skepticism with the band's ties with political campaigns came to a head, with Felder remarking to Cranston's wife, "You're welcome — I guess" as Cranston thanked the Eagles for their help with a speech. This served to anger the other Eagles, Glenn Frey in particular. At the last show in Long Beach, Felder turned to Frey near the end and said "Three more songs and I get to kick your ass," to which Frey rejoined "I can't wait." They then went back to performing, crooning through "The Best of My Love" in perfect harmony. Once the show was over, the two indeed launched at each other in a fight that left the backstage area an utter shambles.
  • After the tour, Felder left, leading ultimately to litigation that would not be fully resolved until 2007^note In 2008 he told Howard Stern that whenever he tries to reach out to Frey and Henley, he only hears from their lawyers. The Eagles for all intents and purposes had broken up. But:
  • Frey and Henley, barely talking to each other by this point, had to satisfy the band's remaining contractual obligations. They did this by editing tapes of the tour (and some older shows) into the two-disc Eagles Live. However, they turned down an additional $2 million to record two new songs—they just didn't have it in them anymore.
  • Which might be because they not only couldn't stand to be in the same room with each other, they couldn't stand to be in the same state. Frey went to New York, Henley stayed in California, and with producer Bill Szymczyk as a go-between they approved the final mixes (which significantly included performances of two of Walsh's solo hits). The album needed considerable vocal overdubbing (it was probably the most overdubbed live album ever); Szymczyk later thanked Federal Express for making it possible.
  • Frey and Henley didn't make up for most of the 1980s. The former told an interviewer during that time that the band would get back together "when hell freezes over". Which turned out to be just what they called their 1994 reunion album.
• Enya may seem like a calm and collected woman given the music she writes; however, reading about the production of her second album, Watermark, would have you think otherwise.
  • Enya's production team comprised a trio: herself, producer/arranger Nicky Ryan, and songwriter/lyricist Roma Ryan. The other two realized just how erratic and hard to work with Enya could be. A perfectionist of the highest magnitude, Enya was demanding of her compositions. She insisted on overdubbing her voice, sometimes hundreds of times, without sampling. This meant that a single vocal line would be recorded up to 50 times just for it to be to her liking.^note  To give you an image of how difficult this is to accomplish, the recording decks at the studios at which they recorded the album could hold a maximum of 32 tracks — which meant that levels would have to be figured out for 32 of the tracks, and then processed to fit on fewer tracks to make space for others.
  • The initial demos were recorded in a basement studio owned by the Ryans, similar to the production of Enya's first self-titled album. They lacked proper equipment and staff to pull off the elaborate instrumentation. When they submitted the recordings to Warner Records, they said the recordings were "too rough" and forced the trio to transport production to Orinoco Studios in London, England.
  • Even when production was moved, conditions somehow worsened. Enya found the city a distraction and disliked how it stalled her creativity. The track "Miss Clare Remembers" originally had vocals similar to the title track, "Watermark", but it didn't sound right so the vocals were scrapped, wasting hours of hard overdubbing work. When it came time to record "Orinoco Flow", Enya and Nicky Ryan found themselves at odds with the elaborate instrumentation, taking months to get it to sound just right.
  • Towards the end of production, Enya slipped on the steps in front of the studio, giving her two huge gashes on her leg. She finished recording with her leg propped up on pillows, doped out on pain killers, scaring the Ryans into thinking she was picking up a drug problem.
  • To make matters worse, touring for the album was simply impossible. Warner and Geffen both wanted to cash in on the smash success of the album, but it was way too expensive to bring in the right number of musicians to do the songs justice. Enya was also awkward during promotion for the album, only doing bare-bones performances of the songs. She would notoriously perform "Orinoco Flow" with just her at a Casio keyboard since the song was simply too complicated to pull off well. Modern performances of the songs have fared better, as technology has advanced, but the singer has yet to do a complete concert performance of the whole album, despite fan demands.
• Jesse Cash of Erra fame described the production of their EP and first Sumerian release Moment of Clarity as “rushed.” Jesse wasn't willing to talk about what else went into production of the EP. It’s speculated that a combination of the rough production cycle and then-vocalist Ian Eubanks' sudden departure from the band due to health issues are the reasons why Erra doesn’t play much from the EP anymore.

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